


A Meta on the London BDSM scene

by pennypaperbrain



Series: Pennypaperbrain's metas [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BDSM, Bondage, Consensual Kink, London, Meta, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:50:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pennypaperbrain/pseuds/pennypaperbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is meta is based on my 10 years’ involvement in the London scene. It’s designed to help writers who are including scene elements in their fics, particularly post-A Scandal in Belgravia.</p><p>It's probably useful to fandoms other than Sherlock as well, so feel free to link to it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Meta on the London BDSM scene

**Author's Note:**

> Some RL details have been blurred to protect privacy. The below represents my personal experience and impressions of my own local scene only. I’m an amateur writing about the amateur scene except where stated: if you want to know about pro-domming check out former pro-dom eldritchhorrors’ excellent [Meta on Professional Dominatrices](http://archiveofourown.org/works/317217).
> 
> If you’re not sure about terminology, see the end of the meta for a short glossary.

**CLUBS**

The contemporary London SM scene is more accessible than ever before. I’m told that 20 years ago – i.e. before the internet – to find the scene you had to first know the right people. Events were invitation only, and often took the form of (very) private parties rather than clubs.  
Nowadays there are ticketed club events in London every weekend. These range in size from relatively small room-above-a-pub affairs, which can sometimes be ‘secret’ to the extent of having a location that you only know if you’re on the mailing list, to larger central-London regular events to the huge Torture Garden. In fact TG is virtually mainstream. Most people who know nothing about the scene have heard of it.

 **Torture Garden**  
Whatever place it occupies in the popular imagination, TG is not really a BDSM club. The one time I went, which was a few years ago now, there were half a dozen pieces of kit in total, and they were surrounded five deep with rows of gawpers. Lifestylers think of TG as either a) a good place to go if you want to show off your new rubber frock, b) a good starting point for newbies or c) a fucking awful starting point for newbies, one which gives the scene a bad reputation. This last opinion arises largely from the contingent of non-scene blokes who attend under the impression that ‘female sub = open to all comers’ and put their beliefs into action by randomly groping any tied-up women.

If you like a warren of massive rooms full of extravagantly dressed dancers, a good proportion of whom are off their heads on something or other, then TG is for you. But if your characters are serious SMers, they don’t do their SM at TG. If they go there at all, it’s to party. 

**Players’ clubs**  
Some regular clubs, like Subversion, are half-dance and half-play and will have clearly marked areas for different activities. Others, like the fantastic and much-missed Hades which ran for a couple of years in the mid-2000s, are entirely play-oriented and will have several rooms filled with dungeon furniture. This generally takes the form of a few obvious staples: St Andrews Crosses, cages of various shapes and sizes, a suspension frame, spanking horses and stocks. Usually there will be a selection of more specialist kit too: possibly a medfet area, or a vacuum bed, or a rack, or something custom made.  
One of the reasons people come to a club is to play with kit that they can’t afford to buy/fit into their houses, so having decent stuff is important. Usually each club has its own collection of kit, and quite often clubs are run by people who also make part of their living custom-manufacturing large pieces of BDSM furniture. The organisers are almost invariably dedicated lifestylers themselves, as there’s little or no money in running a BDSM club. It’s hard enough even to get a central London venue: the reason for this these days not being so much prejudice as that SMers notoriously don’t drink very much so the venue doesn’t get good bar takings.  
Of course, kit isn’t all. Atmosphere is hugely important, and part of the joy of SM is being inventive. If a club has pillars, they are likely to get used for bondage as often as the kit is.  
Every club has a number of officials who are in charge of making sure everything runs smoothly. Sometimes there will be costumed maids, very often TVs, who carry around trays of sweets for the clubbers. Without fail there will be one or more house dom/me(s), who may also play with people who want it as well as generally looking after clubbers and kit.  
Most large clubs will be general play clubs, but some smaller ones will specialise, e.g. in fem dom, male dom, impact play or watersports.

 **Décor**  
An SM club will usually be done out in black, with occasional excursions into purple or red. There will be music playing, and whether or not the music is too bloody loud (thus making play risky, because you can’t hear a sub’s feedback or safeword) can make or break the club experience. Generally Nine Inch Nails or the like will be chugging away in the background, but I’ve had scenes spoiled by some dreadful eruptions of top-volume inappropriate cheese. On one occasion, it was Oasis. Apparently that was the venue’s fault, not the club organiser – frequently there seems to be some tension between the two. But I was scarred, I tell you.  
There will also as often as not be a TV up on the wall playing crap porn. And not even crap BDSM porn, just glossy pink hairless people getting sticky with insertables. As a TV screen is the brightest thing in a dimly-lit room, it can be rather mesmerising – usually there is at least one knot of pervs clutching their Cokes and staring at the screen with a sort of glazed anthropological puzzlement while actual whipping/fisting/etc. proceeds apace around them. That said though, the last couple of events I attended were blessedly free of TVs (well, that kind of TV; there were plenty of the better kind).

 **Club door policies**  
Most clubs have websites, which makes tickets as easy to get as for any other kind of event. The other barriers to entry are demographics and dress code.  
Some clubs will only accept single men if they are vouched for by a trusted party. The reasoning is that if you don’t limit the number of single men in attendance, then unattractive older male subs will overrun the place and put off the women. In my experience there used to be some justification for this fear, and I’ve been to events which had that problem and were spoiled by it, but the London scene is increasingly gender-balanced and age-diverse. The dreaded ‘wankyman’ – typically a 60-something male sub dressed only in grey underpants, who wanders around doing guess what in unwelcome proximity to people’s scenes – does exist but is getting rarer.  
Fetish dress code is a moveable feast. Some clubs take it extremely seriously and will only admit people in full gear; others will accept a black shirt and jeans, particularly if you are known to be scene. Essentially, if you turn up with a bag full of kit and a partner to use it on, you are unlikely to get turned away. The point of the dress code, as well as to create atmosphere, is to keep out random clubbers who fancy a gawp at the weirdos.  
Like every other event in London, BDSM clubs have a bag check at the door. This can be amusing. For example, my last entry to a club went something like this: ‘Er… this bag is full of heavy-duty restraints, that case is a box for electrocuting people and in point of fact I do have a concealed weapon (Penny fishes down her front and produces a riding crop) but it’s probably not something you’re going to worry about, yes?’

 

**OTHER EVENTS**

**Munches**  
A munch is usually a meeting in a pub, with no dress code and a no-play policy (unless the munch takes place in a private room, in which case this last point can be waived). They ‘re intended as a non-threatening way into the scene for newbies, and an ongoing focal point for scene social life.  
The monthly main London munch can attract hundreds of people in the course of the evening. There also are, or have been, dozens of smaller munches based either in a particular area of London or on a BDSM speciality such as spanking or fem dom.  
The received wisdom is that you meet people at munches, make friends, and then go on to play with them at clubs. This may or may not work depending on how lucky you are.  
Munches quite often take place in entirely vanilla pubs, and go on alongside groups of random people having a drink after work. Any given munch will probably have a bit more black leather on show than you’d find at your average social gathering, but otherwise it’s just a bunch of people chatting. Large munches will have one or two oldtimers who are designated greeters for nervous newbies, but otherwise they are informal.  
I have considerable difficulty imagining Sherlock at a munch. SMers tend to be strong personalities, and he’d get in a (verbal) fight within about five seconds. But it would be well worth watching.

 **Parties**  
There are of course plenty of private parties going on. Some people will hire a small venue, as for any other event, or some lifestyle couples have large enough houses to fit a permanent mini-dungeon in their cellar or a spare room. 

**Other RL events**  
Enthusiasts often hold specialist workshops where people can learn and swap tips about particular kinds of technically complex play, most commonly rope bondage. Every couple of weekends there will be a fetish market, which is a pay-to-enter gathering of specialist stalls. Markets are another good place for newbies, because vendors are usually happy to explain their wares in detail and often demonstrate.  
There is a lot of emphasis on education with the scene, as some practices can be dangerous. The danger may be part of the attraction in some cases, but accidentally injuring your partner because you don’t know what you’re doing is just not sexy.  
For a while there was a series of national events called Kinkfest, but this has not been held for a few years now. Each event was a day of talks and demonstrations, but they took a lot of time and money to organise.

 **Online**  
If you live in the city and so can hook up easily, actually scening online is considered to be for wannabes. IC, Fetlife and a few others are mostly used to meet people, consolidate connections with people you’ve met at munches, swap information… and fight with trolls about petty crap. Like fandom then, but with even more pictures of body parts, many of which are less attractive than those belonging to Benedict Cumberbatch.  
Website social networks are a good way of vetting potential play partners. If someone you’re interested is on the social network of another person you know, you can ask that person to vouch for them.

 

**PROFESSIONAL VS AMATEUR**

In spite of the prevalence of the image of the dominatrix and the john in popular culture, most people on the scene have little or nothing to do with the paid side of things. There can even be active tension between lifestylers, who see pro-doms’ customers as sad cases who can’t get a girlfriend, and said customers who see lifestylers as plebs who can’t afford pro-doms.  
That said, there are plenty of female doms who are scene people anyway, and just happen to make money out of their interests. The pro’s I’ve met have attitudes to their work which range from ‘of course I’m a prostitute, so what’ to ‘It’s a few quid on the side and nothing to do with the real me’.  
As well as pro-doms, there are also plenty of people who make part of their living from manufacturing specialist kit. Such people are often central to the running of key scene events, and liberal with their time and expertise.  
For detailed info on pro-domming, see eldritchhorrors’ [Meta on Professional Dominatrices](http://archiveofourown.org/works/317217).

 

**ORIENTATION POLITICS**

The London scene is getting ever more diverse. 10 years ago, it – or what I could find of it – was mostly 40+ white, straight people. The biggest and best change I’ve noticed since then has been the increasing ethnic and age diversity.

 **Clubs**  
Until about a year ago I’d have said it was unrealistic to have a gay male couple attending a mainstream players’ club, as I’ve seen happening in some fic. There is a separate male gay scene which I don’t know much about, except that it appears to be better organised, more serious and more political. Or it might just be that I’m only meeting the sort of guys who do talks on ‘SM and the Law’ at Kinkfest, and they aren’t representative of the gay scene as a whole.  
The lesbian scene, according to some friends of ours, is sporadic at best as people tend to consider themselves lesbian first and kinky second. Our friends tend to have the status of the Only Lesbians in the SM Club in their local scene, and are pretty used to fending off unwanted men.  
There is a tradition of straight-looking female subs being ‘bisexual’ for the edification of male doms, and also of male gays staying away because of hostility shown by said glorious alphas. This is not the most impressive aspect of the scene.  
Recently, though, I have seen a change. The last club I went to had at least a dozen clearly gay men there, just doing their thing along with everyone else. I really hope this takes. As of the present time, it looks like Sherlock and John actually could attend kink night down the Vauxhall Coliseum and be inconvenienced by nothing worse than quite a few women fainting with lust at a respectful distance. 

**Sexual Identity**  
There’s an uneasy relationship/interface between gay and BDSM activism. At Pride events, gay and lesbian SMers sometimes have the problem of the ‘normal’ queers wanting them to piss off and stop making the public think gays are all hardcore weirdos. Much as transpeople have an uneasy alliance with cisgender gays, kinksters can be an unwelcome complication.  
Taken as a component of identity rather than an optional bedroom spice, BDSM adds an additional layer of complexity to identity politics. Plenty of people (including me) self-identify as straight, but prefer doing SM with members of their own gender to having vanilla sex with the opposite gender. Likewise there are gay people who would rather do SM with the opposite gender than vanilla with their own.  
This heavily informs my own interpretation of the BBC Irene Adler, and means I can’t quite share my lesbian friend’s growls of disgust at the perceived warping of the character’s orientation when she apparently conceives an attraction to Sherlock. BBC Irene makes a lot of sense to me as someone whose priorities go 1) mind, 2) kinks, 3) shape of fleshy bits. Whether that was intended by the makers of the show or just fell into place as they blundered through a much cruder story of ‘love interest falls at hero’s feet’ I really don’t know.  
There is also a huge range of identity within BDSM. From much fanfic you’d think that everyone is inherently and fixedly a dom or a sub, but that’s really not so. For a start there are plenty of us switches around, though we do get accused of making things unnecessarily complicated. And beyond that level, many people identify specifically as bottom, top, slave, boi or a potentially endless variety of other flavours which go beyond the scope of this meta but can easily be found online.

 **Relationships**  
There are all kinds of set-ups, as everywhere else – single people, married couples, complex extended poly arrangements etc. The scene adds a variant distinction, in that some people might consider themselves monogamously married/civil partnered, but still do non/semi-sexual SM with third parties. The SM in those cases usually stops short at some mutually agreed limit of intimacy. 

 

**POLITICS AND THE LAW**

This is a quagmire as you would expect. BDSM per se is not banned in the UK, but it _is_ illegal to ‘assault’ someone and cause more than ‘transient and trifling’ physical harm/marks. Such ‘assault’ cannot be consented to in the eyes of the law. In fact, the ‘victim’ is considered accessory to the crime.  
This makes a good deal of moderate to hardcore BDSM potentially illegal. Just how much, and how illegal, depends on what the hell you – or the prosecuting authorities – think ‘transient and trifling’ means. Certainly the law offers no clarification on that score.  
In general the attitude of the authorities seems these days to be that they’ve got better things to do than prosecute consenting adults. But it still can and does happen.

 **Legislation**  
In recent history there have been two big cases and consequent campaigns, both of which were lost by the BDSM community. One was [the Spanner case](http://www.spannertrust.org/documents/spannerhistory.asp), and more recently a section of the 2008 Criminal Justice Act made it illegal to view [’extreme pornography’](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_pornography%20) (another term about as useful and clear as ‘transient and trifling’). Both cases are complex and detailed: follow the links if you want to know more.

 **Media**  
The British tabloid press has a long tradition of destroying people’s lives for the sake of stories revealing that such-and-such a primary school teacher or minor official has a liking for leather, women’s underwear or some other random irrelevance. Most people on the scene know someone who has been exposéd in the _News of the World_ , and often lost their job or been alienated from family as a result.  
The highest profile case was that of [Max Mosley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosley_v_News_Group_Newspapers). Mosley’s resulting elevation to the role of de facto scene figurehead made people uneasy: his case is hardly representative, as we’re not all multimillionaire adulterers. However, it did serve to shine a light on the wrongs being routinely done to other SMers who don’t have Mosley’s publicity clout.  
The recent demise of the _News of the World_ was consequently met with even greater glee on the scene than in most other parts of thinking Britain. It’s one more thing tending towards greater mainstream acceptance, even if the legislators don’t seem to know that.

 **Public attitudes**  
In spite of the lack of concrete results from campaigning, public attitudes have changed, largely because of the internet and the consequent drift of BDSM into the mainstream. Harassment and closure of BDSM clubs is no longer the commonplace it was in the 80s.

SM scene lifestylers’ openness about their sexuality varies much in the way that gay people’s does, with the added consideration that while it’s usually hard to fudge your partner’s gender , SM can remain invisible. A lot of people do stay firmly closeted for fear of prejudice in the workplace or having social services investigate their family arrangements. Others are totally open. A third large category, and this is where I belong, tend to operate on an as-and-when basis. In the same way that vanilla women don’t usually say ‘wow I had some great cunnilingus last night’, I tend not to talk about scenes to random RL people (fandom is interestingly different). But when the subject has come up, I’ve never yet found anyone of my generation actively hostile, though some were obviously a bit freaked, particularly given how little I look like anyone’s idea of ‘a pervert’. The previous generation is a different matter, and I suspect there’s a lot less tolerance outside London and other big cities. My mother for example thinks I’m a traitor to feminism. Can’t have everything.

 

**ETIQUETTE**

As any patriotic scenester will tell you, BDSM runs according to certain key rules. These rules are very sensible and enlightened, and tend to make BDSM actually safer and more consensual than a lot of vanilla activity, because everything is discussed and negotiated in advance.

I’ve often seen these rules trotted out all pristine and shiny in fics. Which is very commendable. Except… in practice it often goes a bit more like this:

 _Rule 1: Always use a safeword_  
Problem: Being so used to assuming you’re using your normal safeword that you forget you’re playing with someone who doesn’t know it.  
Situation-saver: Anyone on the scene will understand a yell of either ‘SAFEWORD!’ or ‘RED!’ Possibly also ‘OW FUCK YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!’

 _Rule 2: Always set up a safe call_  
(This is when you tell a friend where you’re going and who with, and then call them when you’re there to confirm all is well.)  
Problem: Being so crazed by lust that you completely forget.  
Situation-saver: If they are not actually a potential abuser, and most people aren’t, the other person may actually remind you to do it. This can make you feel silly.

 _Rule 3: Negotiate scenes in advance_  
Problem: Printed checklists of abstruse sexual acts are not sexy. It raises the question of ‘OMG, just how over-seriously do you take yourself?’ Likewise it can be difficult to discuss in-depth everything you might want to do when hooking up with someone for half an hour at a club.  
Situation-saver: There are a few things that almost nobody is going to have as a hard limit, so stick to those during a first scene. If a sub does have an unusually strict hard limit, e.g. no bondage of any kind, I’d consider it their responsibility to warn the dom in advance. 

_Rule 4: Never mix play with alcohol_  
Problem: God, you’re sexy. Hic. And I didn’t drink much. Hic.  
Situation-saver: Well, people just _do_ play when they’ve had a drink. That’s humans for you. And if you’re experienced, half a shandy isn’t going to stop you being able to tie knots. You just have to take a reasonable assessment of your own and your partner’s condition, and be responsible enough to stop if things are going wrong.

More general etiquette is much like at any other club. If you want to talk to someone, you approach them on equal terms and use vanilla language to start with. The exception is leashed/gagged/otherwise obviously in-role subs; in that case you’d talk to the accompanying dom and only address the sub if invited.  
I’ve never played outside the UK but I understand there’s massive regional variations in this kind of thing; for example there are clubs where everyone is always in role as a matter of course and addresses each other accordingly.

 

 **IN CONCLUSION**  
Hopefully this meta makes sense to a general audience, although I know I’ve covered quite a lot of stuff that will probably never be relevant to anyone’s fanfic (it’s good to be thorough). If I’ve omitted anything or it isn’t clear, please ask. Also if I’ve been insensitive to any subgroup of people it isn’t intentional.

I’ve been talking about the scene in general rather than specific BDSM practices, because there’s plenty of information about those all over the internet. But if I had one piece of advice to authors it’d probably be that less is more. The most effective BDSM, in life and in fiction, isn’t about the toys. There may not even be any toys, in fact. One of the best scenes I ever had was with a newbie I met at a club. I simply undid the front of his shirt and used my velvet gloves, voice and bare hands… and I got to see his mind and body catch fire with the possibilities of the world he’d just dared to enter.

 

 **Sherlock BDSM fic by people involved in this meta**  
My completed J/S romance [ Points of Light](http://archiveofourown.org/works/415351)  
My completed novel-length J/S romance/angst/adventure [Four Corners of the Western World](http://archiveofourown.org/series/21906)  
The ongoing [Cold Song](http://archiveofourown.org/series/10025) J/S series by my beta eldritchhorrors.

 

 **Terminology**  
This is a minefield. Roughly, though…

 **24/7** : an arrangement whereby participants in a relationship stay in dom or sub role all the time;  
**D/s** : Dominance/submission;  
**dom(me):** the word is always pronounced ‘dom’, but you can add the ‘me’ if you want to make clear that someone is female  
**hard limit** : something a sub (or dom) is totally unwilling to do under any circumstances  
**lifestyler** : someone who is on the scene and identifies with it;  
munch: a social gathering, usually in a vanilla venue;  
**perv** : an SMer; usually a term used between scene people – an outsider using it is unlikely to get a good response;  
**pro-dom(me)** : the scene term for a dominatrix. If Mycroft is to be believed, Irene Adler likes to call herself a dominatrix, but generally that’s a vanilla term and scene people say pro-dom(me);  
**RACK** : ‘risk-aware consensual kink’ – a mantra popular with people who think ‘SSC’ is too limiting;  
**scene, a** : a specific BDSM play session;  
**scene, the** : the local BDSM community and everything it does;  
**SSC** : ‘safe, sane and consensual’ – one popular mantra for psychologically healthy BDSM;  
**soft limit** : something a sub (or dom) really doesn’t want to do but will try if their partner really wants to;  
**switch** : someone who alternates between dom and sub or top and bottom roles;  
**S &M**: an outdated term. Saying ‘S&M’ is like holding up a sign saying ‘I am a n00b and still think it’s all a bit naughty and shocking’;  
**TV** : transvestite;  
**vanilla/nilla** : (someone) uninvolved with BDSM

 **Top/bottom vs dom/sub** : the terms ‘top’ and ‘bottom’ are used more for physical roles, and ‘dom’ and ‘sub’ for psychological ones. If you are playing a scene which is largely about physical sensation, then you are probably topping or bottoming. If you are issuing or obeying instructions, then you’re domming or subbing.


End file.
